A recently-discovered Apple listing for an iPhone quality assurance …

Share this story

One of the most obvious omissions on the iPhone availability list has to be China, and despite a series of rumors over the last few months, we haven't definitively heard when the iPhone will be arriving. On the bright side, we did get some new information yesterday, when AppleInsider spotted an Apple job posting for an iPhone quality assurance engineer in Beijing, which seems like a sure sign that progress is being made toward the Chinese launch of the iPhone 3G.

The last piece of Chinese iPhone information appeared in September, which suggested that Apple still hadn't signed a deal with either China Mobile or China Unicom. As you might guess, the job posting doesn't give any indication that a deal has been reached, but it is one of the first concrete signs of a Chinese launch that we've seen. The job posting notes that the position is related to "international releases" of the iPhone and iPod touch, and also says that the engineer will be working with Apple offices in China. The rest of the description is fairly generic, although internationalization and regional functionality do get mentioned.

On the other hand, the job description is also vague enough that it could just be related to iPhone and iPod touch product development for Asian markets. Software builds and non-Roman inputs are both mentioned, for example. I guess we won't know until something more official comes out of Beijing.